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D.C. Current

No Coattails?

By

Jim McTague

June 3, 2002 12:01 a.m. ET

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The economy is weak, yet President George W. Bush's approval ratings continue to defy political gravity. Democratic pollster Mark Penn says that Bush's approval rate among registered voters is 79%, versus a disapproval rate of 20%. (The other 1% isn't convinced, either way.) This makes Bush the most popular first-term President since JFK. And Bush's numbers are down from the post-September 11 period, when an astounding 88% of registered voters favored his performance, while only 11% disapproved.

If Bush were to run for President tomorrow against any of the current Democratic presidential hopefuls, he'd crush them. But Democrats claim that Bush's popularity won't do much to help the GOP candidates in this fall's congressional elections. "He has no coattails," maintains Simon Rosenberg, president of the New Democrat Network, a fund-raising arm for moderate candidates. Rosenberg cites Penn's finding that registered voters prefer Democratic congressional candidates over Republicans, 40% to 35%. Considering that there's a three-percentage-point margin of error in the numbers, this may not quite be a smoking gun. Indeed, a companion poll of Hispanic voters by pollster Sergio Bendixen found that while they lean toward the Democratic party, they'd vote for a candidate supported by Bush, 38% to 33%. Democrats claim that Bush's influence among Hispanics doesn't cross over to the rest of the voting population.

Rosenberg says that one reason Bush is so popular is that he has distanced himself from Republicans in Congress.

"In [last year's gubernatorial and other elections], Bush had no coattails, and we still kept control of the House," says National Republican Congressional Campaign Committee spokesman Carl Forte. "He may not have coattails this time, but we expect to add seats."

Democratic presidential contenders might take a page from Bush's book and distance themselves from their own party. For now, their public appeal is anemic compared with Bush's: Al Gore has a 47%/47% approval/disapproval rating; Connecticut Sen. Joseph Lieberman, 47%/24%; Missouri Rep. Dick Gephardt, 44%/23% and South Dakota Sen. Tom Daschle, 40%/23%.

There's little doubt that a portion of Bush's popularity reflects public support of the war effort. Even so, his highest peacetime approval rating was 65%, versus a 31% disapproval rate. And just prior to Sept. 11, his numbers stood at 59%/39% -- a remarkable showing for a candidate who barely won the election.

Ronald Reagan's approval number never topped 61% during his first term; and that high point came after just four months in office. Bill Clinton peaked at 55% during the first quarter of his first term. Yet both Reagan and Clinton were in office during robust economic recoveries. Bush's economy is coughing and wheezing. The "misery index" -- the sum of the current unemployment rate, plus the rate of inflation -- averaged 8.7% during Bush's 16 months in office. That's 0.3 percentage points higher than during the presidency of Jimmy Carter, the previous record-holder.

Democrats are crossing their fingers and hoping that Bush's approval rate will slip. Penn claims the number is a lagging indicator. He says public confidence is eroding, and that the chief executive's approval rating is bound to go south, too, in the weeks ahead. According to Penn, 48% of the respondents approve of the direction of the country, while 38% don't. In November, 68% approved of the country's direction and 19% did not.

There may be a more straightforward reason for the divergence in Penn's numbers. The late John Liscio noted in a Barron's cover story six years ago that high presidential approval ratings seem to go hand and hand with increases in disposable income ("The Right Stuff," August 12, 1996). And according to the economists at UBS Warburg, disposable income has increased at 4.5% over the past three quarters, including a 2.4% boost from the Bush tax cuts. It's hard to say if those numbers can be sustained. The next round of tax cuts are not scheduled to kick in until 2004, and Congressional Democrats are trying to scuttle them.

As for the months ahead, "Bush looks like he's shaping up with an economy like his father's -- a weak recovery, following on a financial mania," says Doug Henwood, publisher of The Liscio Report, a newsletter that focuses on state withholding-tax collections, a leading economic indicator. "It will take time to work out of it."

Voters also rally around presidents in time of war. Patriotism could offset any rancor caused by a decline in disposable income. Bush the elder saw a stellar rise in the popularity polls when he took on Saddam Hussein. But those numbers deteriorated within months of the U.S. victory, owing to the recession and a 1.2% decline in real income. But, Henwood muses about "W," "The popularity numbers may not deteriorate so quickly for this Bush, because this military threat is longer-term."

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